Former Love Island star Georgia Harrison - whose ex-partner Stephen Bear was last month jailed for sharing a sex tape of her on OnlyFans - on Wednesday called on the Government for better protection for women and girls online.
The reality TV personality joined forces with charity Refuge for the protest outside Westminster, calling for specific protections for women and girls to be included in the government’s new Online Safety Bill.
The House of Lords is due to begin line-by-line scrutiny of the Online Safety Bill in its committee stage on Wednesday.
Charity Refuge has erected an installation near the Houses of Parliament to recreate a “danger zone”, featuring a giant mobile phone and signs warning of a lack of protection for women and girls “to highlight the multiple spaces online where women are at risk of abuse”.
Ms Harrison, who appeared on Love Island and The Only Way Is Essex, said more must be done to help victims of revenge porn.
“Ever since this happened to me I became someone that victims reach out to, and I get at least five women a day — usually victims but sometimes mothers of victims or family members who want advice,” she said last month.
About one in 14 adults in England and Wales have experienced a threat to share intimate images, according to the Ministry of Justice.
Ms Harrison has said she “will always fear” being secretly recorded following her horrifying experience at the hands of her ex-partner.
Bear, 33, is serving a 21 month jail sentence for voyeurism and two counts of disclosing private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress.
The former Celebrity Big Brother star shared footage of the pair having sex captured having sex on CCTV cameras in Bear’s garden to his OnlyFans account without her consent in 2020.
Refuge and other organisations are calling for a violence against women and girls code of practice to be added to the Online Safety Bill “to ensure social media companies respond to and prevent online violence” against this group.
Refuge ambassador and fellow former Love Island contestant Sharon Gaffka said a code of practice is “desperately needed” so women can stay online “safely and confidently”.
“Every day, I am the recipient of unsolicited images, threats of sexual violence and misogynistic abuse online,” she said. “This is unfortunately a common experience amongst young women.
“Due to the frequency of such messages, society has seemingly normalised this behaviour, and instead of putting onus on the perpetrators, we are forcing women and girls offline. This is not the solution.
“Today, I hope the Government and peers who are now looking at the Bill will listen to the thousands of Refuge supporters who have all taken action.
“Addressing the lack of protection for women and girls in the Online Safety Bill is paramount. I hope to see the code of practice, which is so desperately needed, to be included so that women, and myself, can remain online, safely and confidently.”
On Tuesday, messaging services including WhatsApp issued a warning that the Bill could open the door to “indiscriminate surveillance” of personal communications.
Bosses from messaging firms Signal and Element were also signatories to the open letter calling on ministers to “urgently rethink” the Bill as they warned the legislation would give regulator Ofcom the power to try to force the release of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services.
The Government has argued that Ofcom will only be able to make companies use technology to identify child sexual abuse material in “appropriate and limited circumstances”, with the Prime Minister’s official spokesman insisting “it will not introduce routine scanning of private communication”.
Richard Collard, from the NSPCC children’s charity, urged the Government to resist the tech firms’ calls to water down the legislation.
